Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

you'd let me, which you won't, but… the ship is a mess. Look at it. This had to have been a really bad landing. The hull's split open in several places, there's no sign of the rear assemblies, and Christ alone knows what happened to the sensor spikes. They must have hit the ground like the wrath of God."
    "Exactly," said Lewis. "And they walked away from it. Think how tough, how more than human, they
    would have had to have been to do that."
    "So what do we do?" said Jesamine. "Knock on the hull and wait to be invited in?"
    "There's a really big opening down by the engine compartment," Saturday said suddenly. "And there are some really strange energies radiating from it."
    They all looked at the reptiloid. "You can see energies?" Lewis said finally.
    "Oh, yes. And these are really weird energies."
    "Then that is our invitation," said Lewis.
    He led them down the length of the Sunstrider II, heading for the stern. Up close, the old yacht looked rougher, realer, than it had in his imagination. He'd heard tales about this ship all his life, but… he could have flown a ship like this. He had the skills. He still felt a tingle of almost superstitious awe as he approached the great rent in the steel hull over the engine chamber. Something had smashed right through the reinforced hull, leaving a rent a dozen feet high, and almost as wide. It didn't look like crash damage.
    Lewis swallowed hard, and led the way in, moving cautiously through the gloomy interior— walking where Owen and his companions had walked, long ago. There was a clear path to the engine compartment, but scarlet vegetation had worked its way into the yacht over the years, lining the interior bulkheads with thick mattings of fibrous materials. It grew thicker as Lewis led the way further in, until they were all walking hunched over through a narrow tunnel like a soft, furry, red artery.
    Finally, in an enclosed space that had once, but no longer, held the ship's stardrive, they found Tobias Moon. The living fibers lining the chamber glowed with a soft rosy light, illuminating the Hadenman as he sat cross-legged on the floor, his head bowed forward, his chin resting on his chest. His eyes were closed, and he didn't seem to be breathing. He was a man's size and shape, but even still and silent, there was something of dread and awe about him. He looked to be tall, but not as tall as Rose; broad and muscular, but not so much as Lewis. None of that mattered. This was Tobias Moon.
    He was surrounded and enveloped by a mass of barbed and thorned vines that over the years had pierced and penetrated his body in a hundred places, as though plugging him in to the mass plant consciousness of the Red Brain. Lewis studied the slowly pulsing crimson strands that cocooned Moon's body, and tried to work out exactly what kind of place his quest had brought him to: a coffin, or a regeneration tank? Was this just another preserved body, like St. Beatrice? Or did life still move in what had, after all, been a cyborg body, one of the infamous augmented men?
    "The energies are very harsh here," said Saturday. "Unhealthy. They hurt my head. I've never seen anything like them before. I don't think we should stay here."
    "I can feel… something," said Jesamine, her voice a bare whisper. "Look at what the jungle's done to him, Lewis. Do you suppose it did that to him while he was still alive? Can we cut him free?"
    "I don't think we're meant to," said Lewis. "I think… this is something he chose."
    Moon lifted his head, and they all jumped. He took a long, slow breath, and let it out again. He slowly turned his head to look at his visitors, and a fierce golden glow filled his eyes, unnervingly bright in the rosy-tinted light of the engine chamber. A chill ran through Lewis. No one had seen the glowing golden eyes of a Hadenman in centuries; the mark of Cain, in the cyborgs Humanity had created— the augmented men, who became the enemies of Humanity. The butchers of Brahmin, driven by their
    merciless creed of transformation through technology to pitilessly murder and destroy. They were long gone now, boogeymen to frighten children. But Moon still lived.
    "Welcome, Deathstalker," said Tobias Moon in a harsh buzzing voice. His face had subtly inhuman lines.
    "If you've come to me, you must be in serious trouble." He took another slow, deep breath. "It's been a long time since I spoke with a Deathstalker. You'd better have a really good reason for disturbing me. I was happy, in